Flying and Dying Without George
by Grimm Sister
Summary: It may sound stupid but the night the Order rescued Harry Potter from Privet Drive was the first time that Fred realized that not only might he and George die in this War but they would not necessarily die from the same curse as they fought side by side.


**Flying and Dying Without George**

It may sound stupid, but the night that the Order rescued Harry Potter from Privet Drive was the first time that Fred realized that not only might he and George die in this War but that they would not necessarily die from the same curse as they fought side by side in battle. That was the way in which he had always envisioned their possible death in the war. Their death, always their death.

But Severus Snape had fired at George Weasley, not the Weasley twins. It was the first time that anyone had ever really made the distinction.

Hadn't Umbridge known that you had to ban both the Weasley twins even if only George had technically punched the hell out of that Malfoy brat? She had known that it didn't matter which had actually managed to land the blows, that it was the Weasley twins who attacked him. Even McGonagall had never insisted on putting them in separate detentions the way Remus said she had with the great James Potter and Sirius Black. All the teachers had punished them jointly, treated them that way, said nothing when their essays were identical. McGonagall had not even suggested that they take the classes for which only one of them had received the required marks at N.E.W.T. level. Even their parents didn't bother anymore.

Snape, on the other hand, was always putting them in separate detentions or assigning only one of them – they flipped a coin to decide who would go. He tried assigning them extra work, different assignments – which they always completed together. He sat them on opposite sides of the dungeon – like that mattered, but by that point he was probably getting desperate. George was probably the only student – much less Gryffindor – much less troublemaker – that Snape had ever pursued and tried to convince to take N.E.W.T.-level Potions. He was the only teacher besides McGonagall who knew that the Weasley twins hadn't received a measly three O.W.L.s apiece – those were just their overlapping qualifications. They had different strengths, after all, they just always pooled their collective skills. Snape had not taken it in stride the way the others always did.

So how ironic that it was Snape, finally Snape, who got through in his attempts to treat them as individuals. Sometimes they had wondered if he had time to teach them Potions with all the effort he expended into making them separable. That more than anything made the twins regard him as a "slimy git," full of contempt and annoyance. He didn't understand – he couldn't understand them. Well, the horrible slimy git had finally gotten through – to one of them.

He had fired at George Weasley, not the Weasley twins. That simple _sectumsempra_ had done what all his efforts over the years had not. He had individualized the Weasley twins. Ironic that he could only do it when he didn't know that it was them – when the special doppelganger power of the Weasley twins was defused over the seven Harry Potters and not able to spare time to preserve their unity.

It might not have meant as much if George had also woken up to the unthinkable reality that night. Fred had known from the moment that George made that wretched joke that he hadn't had the same world-shattering realization that night. As far as he was concerned, the Weasley twins had been attacked and now carried the scars – all the more damaging in that everyone could now tell them apart. He didn't see the problem with that. Fred and George Weasley were still just that – Fred and George Weasley, even if they couldn't switch on their mother constantly until it was unclear even to themselves who was pretending to be whom and who really was who.

George still knew him utterly – and perhaps he had enjoyed a small taste of the shock Fred had endured, or it spilled over into his consciousness from Fred's – because he told him later that night, "Don't be an arse and cut an ear off." Fred had been considering it – to relieve the gaping hole in his confidence which Snape's spell had punctured. Fred knew that George's comment was not proof that his brother had had the same experience, however. As far as George was concerned, they had already lost one ear, and they were going to need their remaining three.

George had shrugged the experience off, mourning only the loss of a favorite gag on their mother. Fred had lost considerably more than that. The moment when he had had to ask if his twin had gone loopy – a situation they had always known might be the end result for the pair of them – had nearly broken him. He had had to ask. He hadn't known.

So Fred was ready to make the decision before him, and he was forced to make the decision that before he would have taken for granted. He had to go through the long process of solitary rumination – shockingly frustrating without the constant exhilaration that came from exchange with George – in a golden mist that gradually solidified into the Diagon Alley branch of Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes. He walked along the empty shelves, idly thinking what belonged on each one. He shrugged on the dragon-scale jacket last of all the clothes that appeared promptly in front of him, leaving the ones that had appeared for George hanging there in space.

He could become a ghost. He considered it seriously. Float back to Hogwarts and take up residence as the pearly white double of George Weasley for the rest of their lives until he joined him and they terrorized Hogwarts as thoroughly as Peeves did until centuries later some Headmaster had the guts to ask them to leave and found a Ministry injunction that would actually keep them out.

But then came the thought that George would soon stop looking exactly like him – in color – after only a few years. Then their ghostly forms would have be explained – they would have to be the same while being so different. And George would move on, and Fred would have to watch. That would break their bond in a way that death could not. And what if George, after a lifetime, just moved on? Expecting his dead twin to be able to follow him? Or what if Fred kept him so tied to death he wasn't surprised by it and didn't have the chance to think about the decision?

Fred could wait here for him. Surely George would arrive in the same place – call him there if nothing else. Surely that would happen no matter what Fred did next. Then they could go on together.

But George would go on a journey in the rest of his life. Fred couldn't go along, and just waiting here until it finished…he wouldn't recognize George when he finally arrived here. He would be different, strange. It would be fifty to a hundred years worth of what had happened in those months when Fred leapt forward to an understanding and George stayed still in the faulty belief that, of course, they would go together.

It should have been him. He was ready to comprehend the possibility. George wasn't. George…the way this would hit George…

George wouldn't have thought it would make a difference.

What would George do if it had been him? It was a wrench – a mental wrench that he felt he should have stretched for first – to try to think what George would do. He was spoiled on a lifetime of knowing what they would do.

It was strange to think that you could feel pain here. Everything he needed instantly appeared; his scars had all healed away, erasing the lasting effects of those muted bangs the rest of the family took no notice of when it came from their room. Why should he still hurt?

Because George was hurting…

The answer came to him in a flash. He was still connected to George in that automatic way he had taken for granted for almost the whole of his life - right up until that fateful attack - then examined over and over again in the months until his death. His death, not their death, but that didn't seem to have changed as much as he had thought. He hoped George could feel his peace if he could feel his pain – the peace he couldn't help feeling in a place like this.

Fred smiled. So that was what people meant when they blathered on about loved ones never truly leaving us, was it? He and George were so aware of their unity, their connection, that they could feel it immediately and powerfully. He knew his twin's pain and could only hope that the wonders of what lay _on_ would carry over to George as clearly as George's life would echo in Fred. In a way, it wasn't so very different than embarking on a mission that required them to do something different at the same time.

So that was what he would do. He certainly needed to hold up his end of the bargain in bringing something to this joint plot. Now that he knew that he was wrong – that no amount of separate injuries or delayed deaths could break up the Weasley twins, it was easy to find his wand appear in his hand.

"_Accio brooms!_" Gred gave a great cry. Two Cleansweep Sevens shot toward him out of nowhere in the gold mist, sending parchment and products that had only just appeared flying as they went. The one with the chain and peg still dangling off the end found his hand effortlessly. Fred smirked wickedly, appreciating the fact that, like with that other great summoning charm that led him out of one world and into another, the broom had known that it didn't matter that it was George's broom. It came to his hand just as willingly. Even their brooms had never been able to tell the difference.

So, for what was surprisingly only the second time in his life, Fred threw his leg over George's broom, sent a shower of sparks to set off their Fireworks Section, and flew off into a brilliant sunset, keeping a close grip on George's pain so that he would remain equally tied to Fred's inescapable elation.


End file.
